Features, Design Tools, and Application Domains of FPGAs

In the past two decades, advances in programmable device technologies, in both the hardware and software arenas, have been extraordinary. The original application of rapid prototyping has been complemented with a large number of new applications that take advantage of the excellent characteristics of the latest devices. High speed, very large number of components, large number of supported protocols, and the addition of ready- to-use intellectual property cores make programmable devices the preferred choice of implementation and even deployment in mass production quantities. This paper surveys the advanced features, design tools, and application domains for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The main characteristics and structure of modern FPGAs are first described to show their versatility and abundance of available design resources. Software resources are also discussed, as they are the main enablers for the efficient exploitation of the design capabilities of these devices. Current application domains are described, such as configurable computing, dynamically reconfigurable systems, rapid system prototyping, communication processors and interfaces, and signal processing. This paper also presents the authors' prospective view of how FPGAs will evolve to enter new application domains in the future.     

Modeling the Effect of Process, Power-Supply Voltage and Temperature Variations on the Timing Response of Nanometer Digital Circuits

The implementation of complex, high-performance digital functionality in nanometer CMOS technologies faces significant design and test challenges related to the increased susceptibility to process variations and environmental or operation-dependent disturbances. This paper proposes the application of unified semi-empirical propagation delay variation models to estimate the effect of Process, power supply Voltage, and Temperature (PVT) variations on the timing response of nanometer digital circuits. Experimental results based on electrical simulations of circuits designed in 65, 45, and 32?nm CMOS technologies are presented demonstrating that the models can be used for the analytical derivation of delay variability windows and delay variability statistical distributions associated to process variations. This information can be used during the design and test processes. On one hand, it allows the robustness of a given circuit in the presence of PVT variations to be assessed in the design environment. On the other hand, it allows boundaries between expected functional windows and those associated to abnormal behaviors due to delay faults to be defined. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that the effect of process variations on circuits’ performance can simultaneously be analyzed with those of power supply voltage and temperature variations. Experimental results have also been obtained on several FPGA boards including nanometer-scale Xilinx? and Altera? devices. These results provide a proof-of-concept, on real circuits, of the practical usefulness of the models.     

Optimization of an Industrial Sensor and Data Acquisition Laboratory Through Time Sharing and Remote Access

This paper presents an educational laboratory that has been implemented for the practical education in sensors, data acquisition, and basic control skills. The use of the laboratory has been optimized by the availability of a remote access infrastructure that allows the definition and booking of time slots related to the laboratory sites. Given the many kinds of existing sensors, conditioning circuits, and actuators, setting up an educational framework is a complex (and expensive) task, even if only the main design alternatives are taken into account. An additional and fundamental issue to be considered for the optimization of any educational resource or teaching/learning methodology is the possibility to adapt it to the capabilities of different profiles, i.e., students enrolled in different courses. The proposed solution has been designed to be used by both nonexperienced students, who act as plain users testing predefined experiments, and advanced ones, who can demonstrate the design skills they have learnt, by developing their own applications and conditioning circuits. Accordingly, the remote access infrastructure allows different kinds of users to be defined, whose capabilities, restrictions, and software requirements depend on their level of knowledge.